Unemployment. (or funemployment?)

I made it home, and have been here in New Mexico for 2.5 weeks now. I have been having fun with my my mom, going to museums and banjo recitals and appreciating that creative expression I have so dearly missed. I feel as though I came off of an experience that assumed no particular length of time, moving elliptically and erratically, due to its sheer intensity and otherworldliness. In Fiji, days could feel like weeks, and weeks could feel like days. It was a time warp, with so many life experiences packed into those two years, that having now emerged, am I still 25? Do I have to seriously start a career? But I'm so tired..

That's spawned my latest idea of skipping career and shooting straight to retirement. It's interesting that a few of my friends are emerging from different paths too, having worked intensely in something for a few years, all now arriving in the same spot. Thinking, now what? And to all of us, retirement sounds real nice. Of course, when you spend 4 seconds thinking it through the idea crumbles in impracticality. I guess my generation is lucky we are not necessarily locked into a career upon graduation, and can rather do bits here and pieces there of meaningful and contrasting work.

Adjusting to America is perhaps harder than adjusting to Fiji. They told us, they warned us, and ugh, they were right. A few things I may not have expected:

-Living very rurally for 2 years means that I now feel out of place in the very city I grew up in. I don't know if this will ebb with time, or maybe I have learned that I feel more comfortable going at a rural pace.

-Leaving Fiji meant leaving a family I had grown to love, a cat I raised from a kitten, a routine I had grown accustomed to, a wonderful social network in the other volunteers, an identity I had grown into. Basically, uprooting everything that meant anything to me for 2 years all at once. And I don't know if any parts will remain intact after the transition.

-Struggling with a sense of purposefulness and identity as I figure out what's next.

-Having been through something so intense but so alien. There are no reminders of Fiji here, and it would be easy to forget it even happened. Additionally, no one from America can really understand the intensity of what you've been through.

So those are some things. Like all major transitions, maybe it just takes patience, putting some days under your belt, distracting yourself until it gets easier. However, all that aside, I am excited to live America having lived Fiji, appreciating things more and being physically closer to my family and having easy transportation and communication and freedom and bagels. Lots and lots of bagels.